Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783)

by Ritchie, Charles

  3 March 1945.

  Dinner last night for the Soviet Ambassador, Zarubin. Sat next to the Soviet Ambassadress and asked her how she liked Ottawa after Moscow. She replied with animation, “Moscow wonderful, concerts wonderful, ballet wonderful, opera wonderful, Moscow big city – Ottawa nothing (nichevo) – cinema, cinema, cinema.”

  21 April 1945.

  On the train en route to San Francisco.1 Luncheon with Mackenzie King and was charmed by the fat little conjurer with his flickering, shifty eyes and appliqué smile. He has eyes that can look like grey stones or can shine with amusement or film with sentiment. He chats away incessantly – he seems very pleased with himself, delightfully so, pleased with his own cleverness and with his own survival. He talked of the “fun” of parliamentary tactics which cannot, he added regretfully, be so freely indulged in time of war. He talked of the conscription crisis and said that when it was viewed from the historical point of view its most significant feature would seem to be that the French-Canadian Ministers remained in the Government. That is what saved Canada’s unity. I irritated him by remarking that our troops must be thoroughly tired by now. He replied, “They have had two months’ rest,” (when? I should like to know) and said, “I knew during the recruitment crisis that they were due for that rest but this I could not reveal.”

  He described Roosevelt’s funeral at Hyde Park naturally and effectively, the silence in the garden and the rightness of the ceremony. He spoke affectionately but not over-sentimentally of Roosevelt himself, adding, “When I last saw him I felt the end might come at any moment. When any subject came up about which he had a complex of worry he collapsed completely. When they called me from the White House to tell me of his death I did not even go to the telephone. I knew what had happened without being told.”

  Talking of Mussolini he said, “A remarkably finely-shaped head – the head of a Caesar – deep-set eyes full of intelligence. He did a lot of good – cleaned up a lot of corruption, but he had too much power for too long. They worship false gods in Europe – that is the trouble – Europe is too full of pictures of Napoleon and statues of the Caesars.”

  26 April 1945. San Francisco.

  The San Francisco Conference. San Francisco is as lively as a circus – the setting and the audience are much more amusing than the Conference performance. No one can resist the attraction of the town and the cheerfulness of its inhabitants. Nowhere could have been found in the world which is more of a contrast to the battered cities and tired people of Europe. The shock which I felt on arriving in the normality of Ottawa after England is nothing compared with what one would have felt coming from blacked-out London, Paris, or Moscow to this holiday city. The Bay is a beautiful background, the sun shines perpetually, the streets are thronged, there are American sailors everywhere with their girls and this somehow adds to the musical-comedy atmosphere. You expect them at any moment to break into song and dance, and the illusion is heightened because every shop and café wafts light music from thousands of radios. Colours too are of circus brightness, the flamboyant advertisements, the flags of all the Conference nations, the brilliant yellow taxis. This seems a Technicolor world, glossy with cheerful self-assurance. The people are full of curiosity about the Conference delegates. They crowd around them like the friendly, innocent Indians who crowded around the Spanish adventurers when they came to America and gaped at their armour and took their strings of coloured beads for real. The delegates are less picturesque than they should be to justify so much curiosity. There are the inevitable Arabs and some Indians in turbans who are worth the price of admission, and the Saudi Arabian prince who gleams like Valentino, but in general the delegates are just so many men in business suits with circular Conference pins in their buttonholes making them look as if they were here for the Elks’ Convention. The exceptions are the Russians – they have stolen the show. People are impressed, excited, mystified, and nervous about the Russians. Groups of wooden-looking peasant Soviet officers sit isolated (by their own choice) at restaurant tables and are stared at as if they were wild animals. They are painfully self-conscious, quiet, dignified – determined not to take a step which might make people laugh at the beautiful Soviet Union. The crowds throng outside the hotel to see Molotov, that square-head is much more of a sight than Eden. He is power. When he came into the initial plenary session he was followed by half-a-dozen husky gorillas from NKVD. The town is full of stories about the Russians – that they have a warship laden with caviare in the harbour, etc., etc.

  Meanwhile the local Hearst press conducts an unceasing campaign of anti-Russian mischief-making – doing their damnedest to start a new world war before this one is finished.

  The Conference arrangements have so far been conducted with characteristic American inefficiency. The Opera House in the Veterans’ Memorial Building where the sessions are to be held is like something out of a Marx Brothers’ film. A mob of delegates, advisers, and secretaries mill about in the halls asking questions and getting no answers. Where are they to register their credentials? Why have no offices been allotted to them? Where are the typewriters they were promised? To answer them are half-a-dozen State Department officials white with strain and exhaustion who have themselves not yet got office space, typewriters, or the remotest idea of how the organization is to work. Meanwhile, American sailors are shifting office desks through too-narrow doors. The San Francisco Boy Scouts are shouldering and ferreting their way among the crowd (what they are doing no one knows). Junior League young socialite matrons of San Francisco dressed up in various fancy uniforms lean beguilingly from innumerable booths marked “Information,” but as they charmingly confess they are just “rehearsing” at present and can no more be expected to answer your questions than figures in a shop-window. All the babble of questions goes on to the accompaniment of hammering conducted in all keys by an army of workmen who are putting up partitions, painting walls, eating out of dinner-pails, whistling, sitting smoking with their legs outstretched in the overcrowded corridors. The only thing that is missing in this scene of pandemonium is Harpo Marx tearing through the mob in pursuit of a pair of disappearing female legs.

  28 April 1945.

  Second meeting of the plenary session again in the Opera House with powerful klieg lights shining down from the balcony into the eyes of the delegates, dazzling and irritating them. The session is declared open by Stettinius1 who comes on to the dais chewing (whether gum or the remains of his lunch is a subject of speculation). His manner is one of misplaced assurance – unintentionally offensive. (Although the newspapers have described him as handsome, he looks like something out of the bird house at the zoo – I do not know just what – some bird that is trying to look like an eagle.) He makes the worst impression on the delegates. He reads his speech in a lay-preacher’s voice husky with corny emotion. The Chilean Foreign Minister reads a tribute to Roosevelt which being translated consists of an elaborate metaphor (which gets completely out of control as he goes along) comparing Roosevelt to a tree whose foliage spreads over the world which is struck by what appears to be the lightning of death but is actually the lightning stroke of victory so that its blossoms, while they may seem to wither, are brighter than ever.

  Then comes along Wellington Koo of China, a natty, cool, little man in a “faultless” business suit who reads a short speech about China’s sufferings, written in careful English. After him Molotov mounts the tribune in an atmosphere of intense curiosity and some nervousness. He looks like an employee in any hôtel de ville – one of those individuals who sit behind a wire grille entering figures in a ledger, and when you ask them anything always say “no.” You forgive their rudeness because you know they are underpaid and that someone bullies them, and they must, in accordance with Nature’s unsavoury laws, “take it out on” someone else. He makes a very long speech in Russian, which is translated first into English, then into French, and turns out to be a pretty routine affair. The delegates are by now bored and dispirited. Then Eden gets up a
nd at once the atmosphere changes – you can feel the ripple of life run through the audience as he speaks. It is not that he says anything really very remarkable, but he sounds as if he meant it – as if he believed in the importance of the Conference and the urgency of the work to be done. He is quite beyond his usual form, moved outside himself, perhaps, by exasperation at the flatness and unreality of the proceedings.

  I have developed a sort of rash on my chest and rather all over. I am not disturbed by this, as I have always been a great itcher, but the dolt of a hotel doctor has diagnosed it as measles, which must be a medical impossibility as I have had ordinary measles once and German measles twice. However, the doctor is insistent that it is measles. He said he hoped I knew that it was contagious and might spread rapidly in the delegation. I propose to disregard this.

  30 April 1945.

  Miss Smithson, my secretary, says that agencies – the hotel authorities? or FBI? – have put up a small photograph of me in the women’s washroom with printed underneath, “Avoid contact with the above person who is suffering from a contagious disease.” This will cramp my style in personal and diplomatic contacts.

  22 May 1945.

  The backdrop of San Francisco is gloriously irrelevant to the work of the Conference. The people of the town regard the whole proceedings with mixed benevolence and suspicion. Here is an opportunity to make the rest of the world as free, rich, and righteous as the United States but it is hindered by the machinations of evil men. Of the uncertainties, worries, and fears of the delegates they have no idea. They can swallow any amount of this sort of thing – “The Conference is the greatest human gathering since the Last Supper.” In the end their appetite for ballyhoo is rather frightening.

  But no one could resist the town itself or the luxuriantly beautiful countryside around it, or the spontaneity and chattiness of the inhabitants, or the beauty of the girls – who seem to unaccustomed eyes a race of Goddesses. The town is indeed remarkable for this tall radiant race of amazons; for thousands of sailors who all seem to be on leave with their pockets full and a roving eye for the girls – and for oceans of alcohol in which the happy population float. I suppose there are poor, sick, and worried people here as everywhere else, but the impression is of people without a trouble in the world.

  In the hotel dining-room a crooner with a voice like cream sings by request a number dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lord because they are just married and on their honeymoon – cameras click – the happy couple bask – no self-consciousness – no sneers – it’s “a very lovely thought.” At the end of a drunken evening at the Bohemian Club’s annual frolic the compère suggests that we should stand and sing two verses of “Onward Christian Soldiers”“honouring our boys in the Pacific” – the audience responds without a blush.

  The day is spent in a series of committee meetings which are teaching me several things – the necessity for patience. It is wonderful to see quick-minded men sitting quite still hour after hour listening to people saying at almost infinite length things which could be said in a sentence or two. One becomes, I suppose, inured to boredom. And in combination with this patience the old hands have great quickness. They have been playing this game so long that they know instinctively by now when and how to play the rules of committee procedure or to catch the point of some quite discreet amendment to a motion. They are always on the alert for such things even when they seem to be half-asleep. All this is rather fascinating to a tyro. These are the tricks of the trade. Most men of my age and length of service know them well already.

  I mentioned my alleged measles (now vanished) to a newspaperman as a joke. Tonight there is a headline in one of the evening papers, “Measles at Conference Hotel. Will it spread to the Russian Delegation?” It is true that the Russians are installed on the floor above us in this hotel, but I have no contact with them of any kind.

  23 May 1945.

  The Conference atmosphere is thick with alarm and despondency about Russia. Wherever two or three are gathered together in the hotel bedrooms and sitting-rooms, where more unbuttoned conversation is permissible there you can bet that the subject is the U.S.S.R. – speculation about their intention, argument as to the best way of dealing with them – whether to be tough and, if so, when – gloomy realization that by unscrupulous conference tactics they may be courting and perhaps winning the favour of the “working masses.” This fear of Russia casts its long shadow over the Conference. Meanwhile some of the Latin American and Middle Eastern States, by their verbose silliness and irresponsible sniping, almost induce one to believe that there is a good deal to be said for a Great Power dictatorship. But the Great Power representatives have no eloquent, authoritative or persuasive spokesman in the more important committees. They repeat, parrot fashion, “Trust the Security Council. Do nothing to injure unanimity.” There are no outstanding speakers – Evatt of Australia has ability – Berendsen of New Zealand has eloquence of a homespun sort – Rollin, the Belgian, has a clever, satirical mind (I take names at random) – but there is no one of whom you say – a great man – and few indeed of whom you say – a fine speaker.

  The British Delegation seems pretty thin and undistinguished now that Eden and the other senior Cabinet ministers have gone. Cranborne1 is skilful and authoritative in committee – Halifax does not attend – Cadogan seems a tired, mediocre fonctionnaire. Webster is always at his elbow with an impressive memory (he can quote the documents of the Congress of Vienna, of the Paris Conference, of the Dumbarton Oaks meeting). His heroes are Castlereagh and Wellington. He takes a donnish pleasure in argumentation and in snubbing people. An excellent adviser – but he should not be allowed his head in policy matters – I do not know if he is – one sometimes sees his hand. The delegation is weak on the economic and social side. There is a grave lack of authority – of men of solid experience, wisdom and moderation, who inform a committee – not so much by what they say as by what they are. Then there is the lack of any representation of the English internationalists or those who have devoted themselves to oppressed peoples and to social causes – that whole humanitarian and social side of English activity goes unrepresented. There were representatives of it, but they have gone home – the brunt of the British representation is borne by a little group thinking in terms of political and military power and with not much feeling for public opinion. As they get more tired they may pull a serious gaffe. They produce no ideas which can attract other nations and are not much fitted to deal with Commonwealth countries.

  American policy, or perhaps I should say more narrowly, American tactics in this Conference are similar to British – like the British they hew closely to the party line of support for the Great Power veto while allowing the impression to be disseminated among the smaller countries that they do so reluctantly, that their hearts are in the right place but that they dare not say so for fear of the Russians bolting the organization. One incidental result of this line which the British and Americans may not contemplate is to increase the prestige of Russia. The United States delegation as a whole is no more impressive than the British. There does not seem to be much attempt to understand the viewpoint of the smaller nations or to produce reasoned arguments to meet their objections. On the other hand, the Americans are extremely susceptible to pressure from the Latin Americans who are not doing at all badly out of this Conference. The only American advisers I know are the State Department Team – shifty-eyed little Alger Hiss who has a professionally informal and friendly manner – which fails to conceal a resentful and suspicious nature said to be very anti-British – Ted Achilles – slow, solid, strong physically as an ox, a careful, good-tempered negotiator and a very good fellow – I should not think much influence on policy.

  The U.S.S.R. have achieved a most unfavourable reputation in the Committees. This does not result from dislike for the methods or personalities of individual Russians – so far as the Conference is concerned there are no individual Russians – they all say exactly the same thing (and needless
to say this goes for the Ukrainian and Bielo-Russkis). All make the same brief colourless statements – every comma approved by Moscow – from which every trace of the personality of the speaker has been rigorously excluded. Their reputation is one of solid stone-walling and refusal to compromise. On the other hand, they are continually blackmailing other governments by posing as the protectors of the masses against reactionary influence. This they have done so effectively that it is quite possible for them to produce a record at the Conference which would show them battling for the oppressed all over the world. The insincerity of these tactics is patent to those who see them at close quarters, but will not be so to the public for whom they are designed. They have great political flair – envisage every question not on its merits but entirely from the political point of view. This causes acute distress to (a) the legalistically-minded Latin Americans, (b) all social crusaders and liberal internationalists who see “power politics” invading every aspect of the new organization, the social, humanitarian, and even purely administrative.

  The intellectual defence of the Dumbarton Oaks1 proposals has been left to Wellington Koo, which is rather hard on him, as he had nothing to do with drafting them. I sat opposite him and he fascinated me – he looks like a little lizard, darting lizard eyes and nose down close to his papers. When he speaks he displays a remarkable collection of tics nerveux – he blinks rapidly and convulsively, sniffs spasmodically, clasps and unclasps his immaculately manicured little hands, pulls at the lapels of his coat and continually removes and then readjusts his two pairs of spectacles. This pantomime does not in the least mean that he is nervous of the work in hand – he is a very experienced professional diplomat, quick-minded, ingenious, and conciliatory. But, of course, he has not – any more than any of the other Great Powers’ delegates – the moral authority, eloquence, and vigour which would be needed to carry the Conference – it would take a Roosevelt or Churchill to do that – or perhaps Smuts. The Chinese are an endearing delegation, polite and humorous – but then are they really a Great Power?